Capital markets and financial institutions are all around us. This is an enormous industry in which powerful players oftentimes challenge investors and the public at large and expose them to significant risks.
This Course provides for the deep understanding of the core ideas, concepts, and mechanisms of the modern capital market in a learner-friendly way. We will analyze the market’s most fundamental problems, realize the intrinsic interests of the market participants, reveal the true meaning of certain financial terms, and uncover credible signals of the likely behavior of economic agents – all that with little math and a lot of fun.
The learners will be much better positioned with respect to the financial environment. They will see through the financial news, reveal the risks of the financiers’ wishful thinking promises, and protect themselves against dangerous adventures. The learners will get the opportunity to use the obtained knowledge, skills, and understanding for the successful professional career in the financial and other business areas, as well as in their day-to-day life.

Reviews

DH

The pace of the course is great, I gladly will recommend this to others foe quality reference.

ZA

Dec 10, 2018

Filled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled StarFilled Star

this is a very very good course I recommend my friend study this course and coursera

From the lesson

Public Investments and Investment Banking

Week 5 of the Course is devoted to public investments and investment banking. We consider the major activities of investment banks – underwriting, trading, consulting, and financial innovation. We study the details of underwriting and the core reasons for underpricing as an important phenomenon that determines the observed behavior of market participants in the process of financing.
We also discuss the mechanism of market bubbles and crises as well as the role of investment banks and other financial institutions in the crisis development. That sets the background for the idea of regulation of investment banks.

Taught By

Konstantin Kontor

Director and Professor of Finance and Strategy

Transcript

Welcome everyone to the fifth week of our capital markets and financial institutions course. We mentioned in the last episode of the previous week, that we are now moving to other financial institutions than banks. Well indeed, we've studied banks in greater detail, just because they are, first of all, important and fundamental financial institutions. And second of all, because they are the best tools to study the core issues of private information, that are key in understanding the structure and functions of capital markets and financial institutions. But now I'd like to say a few words about how people perceive capital markets. Remember in the previous week we said, well, for the majority of people, the bank is a smartphone. Now, what is capital market for the majority of people? Well, this is not these formulas that we have put on this flip chart, instead, this is the picture like there's lots of monitors and there's something green and red blinking. And then there are people with gestures and yelling, and also we know that sometimes there are huge fortunes, and then there're collapses, crises. So, this is this really energetic and moving thing for the majority of people's capital markets. And again, there is no contradiction. But the thing is that what people see, and what people watch in movies, these are the faces of capital markets, that are closely connected with another important service and with another huge institution. That is called an investment bank. And in order to understand what it is, we have to go back to the background. Now, the story here is as follows, we've have not only private investment. Private investment is the area of the bank, remember all this monitoring private information, that all deals with the idea of that there is some information asymmetry between one party and the other. But there are also public investments. So, if you want to buy a share of stock. Then you go to a broker, you consult about the price, then you make a decision the broker does that for you. And then you are the owner of the shares of stock. Now, it doesn't seem to be a lot of private information. A lot of special expertise in buying a share of Facebook or a share of Apple or something. Now, but let's think a little bit. So, when we deal with public investments, then we might see something different in terms of support and provision. And we will analyze this throughout this week, and to some extent some instruments will be discussed in our final six week of this course. And for now, we have to say just one thing. When we deal with public markets, then there is the demand for another powerful financial institution, for another skyscraper, and this is an investment bank. So, in the next episode. I will talk in some more detail about what public markets and public investments are. And this way, we'll be able to come closer to what exactly investment banks do, and we will discuss that in the episodes to follow.

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